Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
disembodied spirit. And it activated twinned circuits of transduction: one
which moved from voice to wires and electromagnetic waves and back
to mediatized sound, and another from mediatized sound to
ayipie
spirit
and back to psychic and bodily interiors.
“When I hear someone's voice on the radio, my
ayipie
goes near them,”
Dasua told me. This was not merely an expression of empathy. Rather,
it also referred to the kind of mechanics through which radio sound be-
came a technique for practical assistance. This pragmatic force was usu-
ally rooted in vocalizations of prayer, a practice that was associated with
the same haptic mobilization of
ayipie
previously attributed to shamanic
healing chants such as the
ujñarone
. Like sympathetic magic of all kinds,
the power of prayer depended on being able to effectively channel and
direct the movement of one's
ayipie
. Radio sound promised to aid in the
expansion and redirection of a Christianized
ayipie
:
the radio helps us find out about other people like those living in puesto paz. we heard
recently that someone had bothered one of them and they asked us to pray for them.
we can pray for them. we prayed a lot and the situation in puesto paz improved. god
helped them through the radio. without the radio, we wouldn't have known, and the
strength of our prayers, our
ayipiedie
would not have reached them.
Jochade, Dasua, and the others in Arocojnadi always attributed radio's
power to enhance the circulation of
ayipie
to its status as a defining tech-
nology of
Cojñone-Gari
. It was suitable for transferring not only new
Ayoreo
ayipie
but the
ayipie
of
Cojñone
as well. Through radio sound,
Jochade said, some people were able to transform spirit. He implied that
radio sound was a medium for the mimetic transference and transforma-
tion of
ayipie
itself.
the radio is useful for someone who speaks Spanish because if a
cojnoi
speaks, the ay-
oreo can listen and acquire the same
ayipie
as the
Cojñone
. if Mateo listens to a
cojnoi
on the radio, he might say to himself, “My
ayipie
was not well developed before, but
now i will make it grow. i will make it like the
ayipie
of the
Cojñone
.”
Jochade's tutelage continued as the days shortened and the rains
gradually stopped. By the early dry season of 2007, I was convinced that
this mediatization of
ayipie
explained the seemingly mundane content
of Ayoreo electronic media practices. The words, as he had said months
before, were less significant than this metaphysics of media. Words were
often secondary vehicles for the sentiment, breath, and sound aimed at
accelerating the beneficial circulation of
ayipie
. When properly deployed,
